A mystic’s musings on the interplay of intellect and intuition.

I know you’ve felt it.

Or at least, I hope you have.

Magic is real, and it permeates our world.

I’m not talking about that particular form of deception found in feats of prestidigitation.

I’m not even necessarily talking about Aleister Crowley’s definition of magick (with a “k”) wherein physical reality is made to conform to one’s Will.

I’m talking about everyday magic that fills us with a sense of wonder and even awe. It is simultaneously the most miraculous and mundane of sentient experiences:

The kind that is made even more immersive specifically because we don’t know precisely what is happening, or why.

The kind of magic that keeps children wide-eyed and smiling as they experience the world with fresh eyes.

Everyday magic is so powerful that if you’re conscious of even a tiny spark of it, it can power your day, your year; perhaps a lifetime of joy.

The magic is everywhere, in everything…and in nothing at all.

☩ ☩ ☩

For me, the spark is strongly and immediately triggered by physical places; I don’t know how or why.

I remember feeling it powerfully many years ago when I first drove westward, out of the desert and over the low, rolling coastal hills to visit Morro Bay and San Luis Obispo on the Central California coast, refreshingly cool even when inland summer temperatures reach 118º F (48º C) or more.

I felt it when I discovered the 400-year-old city of Santa Fe, New Mexico, sitting at over 7,000 feet in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains—the "Blood of Christ" range—where the peaks often ignite crimson at sunrise and sunset.

The magic is strong—famously so—in the red rocks of Sedona, Arizona, where energetic vortices whisper of parallel realities; in Maui’s mysterious, jungle-like Īao valley, the final resting place of ancient Polynesian kings; in gilded, mountaintop temples in Chiang Mai.

And I have felt it in many other places on this planet.

The spark of magic is not limited to the Wall that Hadrian built to mark the border of Roman influence in Britain, or one brutally baffling basilica in Bruges. I regularly visit completely anonymous places that appear to have been abandoned by humans for centuries, to feel and celebrate the spark of magic—as did the people who long ago dwelt there.

As amazing as it is to stand in one particularly storied circle of Welsh bluestones on Salisbury Plain, magic is available anywhere if you learn to listen, to feel it.

Above all, here’s the point: the places that once ignited the spark of wonder in my mind and heart and soul—do still, to this day.

☩ ☩ ☩

Why do we “grow out” of our connection with wonder?

It is true that, by necessity, we become invested in the machinations of daily existence. Our powerfully entrenched negative bias, instilled to protect us from threat, also leads us to focus our attention—and intention—on careers and bills and kids’ soccer games and that funny noise the car just started to make.

But there is something else at play here.

From an early age, we are trained to reduce life and its mysterious magnificence to an oversimplified materialistic paradigm—to treat only that which our rational Cartesian minds can measure as fully real.

In our hubris, we sometimes mistake our models for reality itself—as people have done in every age—and imagine that the nature of nature can be contained within tidy boxes of falsifiable hypotheses and Bayesian inferences.

In so doing, we allow ourselves to accept conclusions that we simply aren’t smart enough to make:

- That there is no meaning to our existence,
- That consciousness is local,
- That life begins and ends with our physical form;

That rainbows and aurorae and a sunset that can bring you to your knees are simply tricks of light, when in fact they are only a visible part of Light itself.

And so we accept the admonition of so-called experts to leave “childish” things in childhood.

To accept adulthood as though it is an inevitable grind through drudgery.

As though we know it all.

As though “this is all there is,” when in fact, “this” is everything there is.

When we are actually an inseparable, irreducible part of it all.

☩ ☩ ☩

Why does it matter?

The proof is in the existential pudding.

Look around: people who have a sense of joy and feel the magic of life are more satisfied; enjoy more eudaimonic wellbeing.

The results of peer-reviewed studies (our best attempt to quantify that which is quite beyond our grasp in its entirety) are statistically substantial:

People who report being engaged in their chosen purpose and joyful about life have significantly

- lower rates of depression and anxiety;
- greater resilience under stress;
- more effective emotional recovery after negative events;
- lower experience of loneliness;
- greater life satisfaction and social well-being;
- reduced hopelessness and psychological distress;
- lower risk of disability;
- fewer limitations in activities of daily living;
- better self-rated health;
- less cognitive decline;
- lower risk of some adverse cognitive outcomes;

…and a significantly lower relative risk of all-cause mortality.^{1, 2, 3, 4 ,5 ,6 ,7 ,8 ,9, 10, 11}

If, in spite of all this, someone still says, “prove it,” the answer is that no one can prove that the measurable world exhausts reality.

☩ ☩ ☩

No matter how far away the ineffable lightness of being you once felt may seem to you now, you can regain the wonder that animates life, that makes you want to get up in the morning.

It is a matter of mindset.

If you consciously and intentionally allow yourself to feel the wonder of life, you can retain the spark of magic for a lifetime.



References:

1. AshaRani PV, Lai D, Koh J, Subramaniam M. Purpose in Life in Older Adults: A Systematic Review on Conceptualization, Measures, and Determinants. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 May 11;19(10):5860. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19105860. PMID: 35627396; PMCID: PMC9141815. 
2. Boehm, J. K. (2021). Positive psychological well-being and cardiovascular disease: Exploring mechanistic and developmental pathways. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 15(6), e12599. https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12599 
3. Boreham, I. D., & Schutte, N. S. (2023). The relationship between purpose in life and depression and anxiety: A meta-analysis. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 79(12), 2736–2767. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.23576 
4. Chida, Y., & Steptoe, A. (2008). Positive psychological well-being and mortality: A quantitative review of prospective observational studies. Psychosomatic Medicine, 70(7), 741–756. https://doi.org/10.1097/PSY.0b013e31818105ba
5. Cohen, R., Bavishi, C., & Rozanski, A. (2016). Purpose in life and its relationship to all-cause mortality and cardiovascular events: A meta-analysis. Psychosomatic Medicine, 78(2), 122–133. https://doi.org/10.1097/PSY.0000000000000274 
6. Dockray, S., & Steptoe, A. (2010). Positive affect and psychobiological processes. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 35(1), 69–75. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2010.01.006 
7. Martín-María, N., Miret, M., Caballero, F. F., Rico-Uribe, L. A., Steptoe, A., Chatterji, S., & Ayuso-Mateos, J. L. (2017). The impact of subjective well-being on mortality: A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies in the general population. Psychosomatic Medicine, 79(5), 565–575. https://doi.org/10.1097/PSY.0000000000000444
8. Pressman, S. D., & Cohen, S. (2005). Does positive affect influence health? Psychological Bulletin, 131(6), 925–971. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.131.6.925 
9. Schaefer SM, Morozink Boylan J, van Reekum CM, Lapate RC, Norris CJ, Ryff CD, Davidson RJ. Purpose in life predicts better emotional recovery from negative stimuli. PLoS One. 2013 Nov 13;8(11):e80329. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0080329. PMID: 24236176; PMCID: PMC3827458.
10. Sutin AR, Luchetti M, Aschwanden D, Lee JH, Sesker AA, Stephan Y, Terracciano A. Sense of purpose in life and concurrent loneliness and risk of incident loneliness: An individual-participant meta-analysis of 135,227 individuals from 36 cohorts. J Affect Disord. 2022 Jul 15;309:211-220. doi: 10.1016/j.jad.2022.04.084. Epub 2022 Apr 26. PMID: 35483500; PMCID: PMC9133197.
11. Sutin A, Zavala D, Milad E, Stephan Y, Karakose S, Brown J, Terracciano A, Luchetti M. Purpose in life and mortality: A meta-analysis of the published literature and individual-participant data of 488,765 participants followed for up to 32 years. Psychol Med. 2026 Jul 8;56:e214. doi: 10.1017/S0033291726104863. PMID: 42417009; PMCID: PMC13370182.

Note: The 2026 Sutin et al. meta-analysis is unusually timely: it was published online on July 8, 2026, only ten days before this article, and provides perhaps the strongest current data—nearly half a million participants and an association between purpose and roughly 24% lower unadjusted relative mortality risk.



Read my recent interview with Dr. Mehmet Yildiz here.

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